The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-10-25


many women, so find by actual inquiry in
the larger houses who are paid $50 week,
some who are paid S25 some $50, and some
who can buy for an important department
or who are employed as dressmaking or
millinery designers who get considerably
more. The shop girl, if she is bright girl,
has a chance
WOMEN MAKE BETTER TYPEwRTTERS
than mon and quite as good stenographers,"
said Miss Mary l. Seymour Miss Seymour
has six offices and employs great numbers
of women. She was herself one of the first
women in the country TO enter the business,
is fine sample of a successful business
woman and speaks with authority
"What is the prospect for a young woman
in the profession" she was asked. How
many in the city pursue it and are the wages
increasing or the reversep
THE pay for really competent women is,
If anything, increasing. The best stanog-
raphers and typewriters are in great de-
mand and many more could easily find en-
ployment. Probably 900 women are regu-
larly employed in this city alone and many
more throughout the country. | should say
SIS a week might be fair average pay.
though many competent operators get less,
chiefly from lack of business training and
proper appreciation of their real value, and
others get more. Twenty dollars $25 and $50
Z
telligent womeG. But there is a large mum
Der of young girls who have not perfected
themselves III the art who are willing to
work for almost nothing, and these girls cut
down the price for poor work to absurd
figures. But, as | said, good operators can
command good pay. AS an almost univer-
sal rule, too, they are courteously treated by
their employers"
"Would it pay a finely educated woman,
a college graduate, for instance, to learn
typewriting and stenography instead OF
teachingY
81 should think SO, decidedly. General
intelligence, common sense, good education
and pleasant bearing commend a woman
for employment quite as much as manual
skill Only well-educated, intelligent women
reach the more highly paid places Let me
pupil whom | placed with a publishing
house at IS or $40 a week. Some months
after | sent her to another place for $12.
Not long after that her wages were raised
to SIS rather than let her go, and she is now
employed by one of the foremost law firms
in the city and making, | should say, nearly
s., 500 a year. That is an exceptional case,
of course, but woman who attends to
business and is quick and intelligent can
always do well. If she doesn't it is because
of lack of business training.
About the time. Some people think the
typewriter is simple thing to learn, but
they are mistaken. 1t needs study and
practice In six months an intelligent girl
can learn to take place as amanuensiS. A
reporting stenographer-one who can take
long addresses verbatim-is very different
matter. 1t takes years of practice to be-
come equal to that"
I'm general, then, there is plenty of work
for competent womenm
Precisely"
THE YOUNG MEMS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION
found employment last year for more than
200 women, and, fairly settled in its fine
new substantial building on East Fifteenth
street, is helping far larger number to self
support this year. At its employment bu-
reau was told that the prospects for an
intelligent woman to earn comfortable
livelihood were never so encouraging as
now. 1--WE have incapables to deal with
often" it was said, land as competition in
every line grows brisker every day the lot
of incapables becomes more and more hard.
The greatest obstacle in the path of women
is their own lack of business habits and
ways. But practical business woman is
appreciated and has good field of work"
You send out a great many stenogra-
pliers and typewriters, do you not! Is that
business overdonew
Badly for the kind of girl whose lack
she works for. 1t is an excellent business
for the girl who knows something. Many
business men prefer to employ women be-
cause business secrets are safer with them.
They don't care to take advantage of a
pointer by deal on the Stock Exchange"
Glow about dressmakers and seam
stressesm
There is more work for them than
women to do it A woman who can do
nIain SaXpillcr r1inalu G1 IN
working day in the year. If she can do
fine sewing for children she can make 81 or
even 81 so. A family dressmaker who can
cut and fit has her 50 so, So or So so day"
What becomes of the starvation rates of
the sewing women, theng"
THE women who do the slop work for the
jobbers are not usually skilled laborers.
Some of them can do good work and are
kept on short commons because of their
lack of practical education. They don't
know that they might as well have better
wages, and don't know how to put them
selves into communication with people who
are suffering for lack of seamstresses and
are ready to pay for them. But most of
the tenement house workers can do nothing
but take a set of garments all prepared for
them and run up seam on each exactly
alike from No. l to No. 80. You can do
nothing for them but put them into shops
where there may be sewing under direction
of sort that they can do. Skilled seam
stresses command good pay"
THERE ARE ABOUT 600 WOMEN
who set type in New York"
This was the reckoning of a proofreader
of long experience.
lis it, as things go, good trade for
woman, and how are the wagesF
The prosperity of the typographica union
has been a good thing for women. SO | was
informed. Typesetters are men of sufficient
intelligence to know that the principal dan
ger to be feared from the competition of
women comes from their lower rates of
wages, and SO it comes about that whereas
in non-union offices a difference of several
cents per 1000 ems is frequently made be-
tween the pay Of the sexes, in union offices
they stand on the same footing and de-
cided gain thus accrues to the feminine
members of the force.
Intelligent women make good typesetters,
but their reputation as workmen, in news
paper offices at least, does not, / find, equal
the average of the men. The proportion of
women employed is, however, small and an
accurate Judgment not easily reached.
Women are not employed on morning pa
pers, which are set at night, and not extern
sively on afternoon papers. Newspaper
men say they cannot hurry. Their work is
mostly for the weeklies, for magazines and
on books, departments much less well paid
than newspaper work. 1t takes nimble fin
gers to make SIP week on the Century,
the same diligence being worth to a woman